What is the distinction between
Hadith and sunna?

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ŠNuh Ha Mim Keller 1995

The word sunna has three separate meanings that are
often mixed up by Muslims when the term arises in discussions.

The first sense of sunna is in the context of shari'a rulings, in which
sunna is synonymous with the mandub or "recommended", meaning something
that one deserves a reward in the next life for doing--such as using the
miswak to clean one's teeth before prayer--but is not punished for not
doing. It can be contrasted in this context with the "wajib" or
obligatory, meaning something that one is rewarded in the next life for
doing-- such as performing the prescribed prayers--and deserves punishment
in the next life for not doing. The sunna in this sense is at the second
level of things Allah has asked of us, after the wajib or obligatory.

A second sense of sunna is in the context of identifying textual sources,
as when the Kitab, meaning the Qur'an, is contrasted with the sunna,
meaning the hadith. In this sense, sunna is strictly synonymous with
hadith, and is used to distinguish one's evidence from that of the Qur'an.
One should note that this is quite a different sense from the
above-mentioned meaning of the word sunna, though sometimes people confuse
the two, believing that the Qur'an determines the obligatory, while the
hadith determines what is merely sunna or recommended--but in fact,
rulings of both types are found in the Qur'an, just as they are in the
hadith.

A third sense of sunna is the way of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace), embodied in the things he said, did, and in his noble states
of heart; together with the things he approved of in others (whether by
explicit confirmation, or by allowing them to be done in his presence
without condemning them), and the things that he intended to do but did
not get the chance, such as fasting on the ninth of Muharram (Tasua).
Here, sunna simply means the Prophets way (Allah bless him and give him
peace), and is not to be confused with either of the two senses mentioned
above. In contrast to the first sense, his sunna or way (Allah bless him
and give him peace) includes not just the recommended, but rather the
whole shari'a, the entire spectrum of its rulings, whether obligatory (wajib),
recommended (sunna), permissible (mubah), or avoiding the offensive (makruh)
or unlawful (haram). And in contrast with the second sense, his sunna or
way (Allah bless him and give him peace) is preserved not only in the
hadith, but first and foremost in the Qur'an, for as Aisha (Allah be well
pleased with her) notes in the hadith of al-Bukhari, "His character was
the Qur'an".

The confusion and non sequiturs that often result when Muslims discuss the
sunna could perhaps be better avoided if these distinctions were kept in
mind.